Jennie walked past the fairgrounds then kept walking until she reached Sutton Street, the heart of the financial district. The stock exchange, board of trade building, and the city’s largest banks all had their offices on Sutton, which meant that all the real money in the city passed through it. This gave the area its own charged atmosphere and as soon as she turned the corner she could feel it, a certain shift in the energy that made her aware she was now in an exclusive part of town. The sidewalks were still crowded but less chaotic, as if everybody was determined to walk in straight lines. The men wore dark suits, there were very few women, and the only other brown people she saw were holding open doors.
In the middle of the block was a narrow brick building wedged between two skyscrapers, and a small orange sign out front that read, “Monsieur Leclerc, le tailleur est ici.” The building didn’t look like much compared to all the bright concrete and gleaming steel that surrounded it but that, Jennie knew, was in truth an expression of power. Monsieur Leclerc’s tailor shop had been there for almost one hundred years, built by the original Mr. Leclerc, who had come from France and established himself as the finest tailor in the city. During his lifetime his handmade suits had been the ultimate status symbol, instantly recognizable for their quality and unique buttons. Now it sat in the middle of the financial district that had been built around it, a symbol of power and influence hiding in plain sight like a rich man’s handshake. The Leclercs did not advertise; their clientele was acquired entirely through word of mouth, and they continued to make custom-made suits for the most prominent men in the city, one of whom was Mr. Holder.
He’d agreed to see her while he was getting fitted for a suit. As she walked to the door she could see him through the front window, a tall, heavyset white man staring at his reflection in a three-way mirror, while her friend Aggie, who worked there as a shop assistant, was crouched down in front of him, making some adjustments to the hem of his pants. It hadn’t been easy to make contact with a man like Mr. Holder. Jennie might never have if it weren’t for Aggie. Aggie was an excellent tailor in his own right and had his own business he ran out of his living room on weekends and in the evenings. But during the week, during daylight hours, he was here, taking measurements and doing minor repairs for the Leclercs. He’d seen Jennie struggling to make contact with someone who might be able to do something with her cream and finally suggested she let him try some of the customers at the shop. She’d gotten her proposal into the hands of three company representatives in this manner, but Mr. Holder was the first one to say he actually wanted to meet.
A bell rang as she stepped inside.
“Excuse me, Mr. Holder?” Aggie smiled as he nodded toward the door. “It appears your appointment has arrived.”
Mr. Holder spun around as Aggie made the introductions: “Mr. Holder? Jennie Williams. Jennie Williams? This is Mr. Holder.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Jennie said and put out her hand. “Thank you for taking the time.”
Mr. Holder looked down at her hand and nodded. “Yes, well of course this is a bit odd. Not the usual way we conduct business. Your proposal was brought to my attention through unusual circumstances, although, I must say, I’m glad it was. I’m curious as to how you managed to come up with it.”
So she told him how, while working on a certain combination of ingredients in preparation for a meat sauce, she’d had occasion to utilize some of them as a poultice. She was immediately struck by the dramatic results when applied to the skin. She’d done some research, made some changes to the formula, and kept working on it until she’d come up with something she was sure would have mass appeal. Thus, what had begun as a sauce had been utterly transformed into a multipurpose beauty salve that she’d named after the woman who’d inspired it: Mamie’s Brand Gold.
All this was more or less true. The only things she left out were why she’d been working on a sauce in the first place and how it was she’d wound up applying it to her face. The sauce was Mamie’s idea: when she saw how successful the Rib King brand was becoming she’d suggested they work together to create something that could compete with it. This had seemed a reasonable goal given that between Mr. Sitwell and Mamie, Mamie was without question the better cook. Rib King sauce had started out as something cheap and easy, cobbled together from Mamie’s leftovers, mixed with tomatoes and sugar and then whipped up one night precisely because it was cheap and easy. A few years later, it was one of the most popular store brands in the country. If that was all it took to have a successful store brand, they didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t have one too.
It turned out Mamie didn’t know how to compete with cheap and easy. During the three years they’d worked together she’d come up with a whole series of recipes that were delicious but which, for one reason or another, were clearly unsuitable for mass distribution. Still they kept trying. Over time they’d come to enjoy each other’s company so much that they might have still been trying if Mamie hadn’t decided to pack up and move to San Francisco. The Barclay fire had caused such damage to her reputation that it had started to seem as if she might never find work in a decent kitchen again. One day she was considering offers from the Fowler and the next thing she knew, the best she could get was a job frying hot wings at an after-hours club. After a while she realized if she wanted to do the work she’d spent most of her life training to do, she’d have to do it someplace else. Jennie understood it but still had been devastated when she found out her friend was leaving. As opposed to having been carefully applied as a poultice to treat a wound, it was in the process of wiping tears from her eyes one night that Jennie had wound up smearing some of Mamie’s leftover sauce all over her face. She fell asleep without bothering to wash it off, and when she woke up, her skin was positively glowing.
She figured Mr. Holder didn’t need to hear all that. Instead she told him that Mamie was remarkably hydrating. It clarified the complexion and reduced scarring and the appearance of stretch marks. When applied to the scalp it soothed seborrhea and thereby promoted hair growth. But the quality that made Mamie truly unique was that it was also a cure for thrush.
“Thrush?” Mr. Holder said. “But that is a medical condition, is it not? And yet you claim your beauty cream cures it?”
“Don’t just claim. It does cure it. That’s why I prefer to call it a healing salve.”
“And how do you account for that?”
Jennie looked at Aggie. She didn’t want anybody stealing her ideas, but Aggie had convinced her that she needed to tell a potential backer enough about what the product was that they would understand why it was worth the investment.
“Vitamins, sir.”
“Vitamins?”
“That’s right. You advertise them in some of your breakfast cereals, so I know you are familiar with the term. From what I’ve read their discovery came about when doctors realized there was a connection between diet and certain diseases. Poor folks getting sick due to a lack of something rich people were getting in the food they ate. That something is called vitamins and it turns out they also have remarkable healing effects when applied to the skin.”
“Is that right?”
“Absolutely. In truth this is something women have known for a long time without knowing why. But you ask any poor mother who can’t afford to go to a doctor what they do when a loved one gets a rash or an infection or a condition like thrush and they’ll tell you about all kinds of recipes for poultices that have been passed down over the years. They’re called kitchen sink cures. A lot of them don’t work, but some of them do.”
“And you think it is vitamins that account for this? Based on what?”
“Research. Trial and error. Experimentation.”
“Experimentation? What does that mean? Were you working with a chemist?”
“No, sir. A cook.”
“A cook?”
“Yes, sir. A very good one. A woman who knew a great deal about food. Knew about the effects of different foods on the body, both inside and out. And like many women, she knew what worked without always knowing why. I didn’t understand myself until I started reading about vitamins.”
Jennie reached into her purse, pulled out a small vial that contained a sample of Mamie’s Brand, and set it on the side table next to the chair. She pointed to it.
“Fish oil. Most potent source of vitamin A and D readily available. Also essence of seabuck berry, most potent source of vitamin C. Figuring out how to combine these ingredients was not easy, and I’m not going to tell you how I did it unless we have a deal. I will tell you that it involves the use of a very precise ratio of a certain stabilizer that itself is very good at brightening the complexion. After that, the hardest part was dealing with the smell. As you can imagine, fish oil and seabuck berry juice do not smell like anything you would want to put on your face, to say nothing of other parts of your body. It wasn’t easy, but I found a way to manage that too. I realized it was impossible to get rid of the smell, and trying to mask it didn’t work either. I had to find a way to change it. That’s what most of the other ingredients are for. Don’t so much disguise a bad smell as change it into something else.”
“Impressive.”
“Yes, sir. I imagine that’s why it’s done so well. I’ve got my own beauty parlor on Thirty-Seventh and I’ve been selling it there for almost a year now. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t keep up with demand. And that’s where you come in. You get Mamie on those store shelves and I guarantee she will sell.”
“What did I tell you?” Aggie said. “Jennie’s smart, just about the smartest woman I ever met. She knows what she’s doing and she’s telling the truth. You should hear how people talk about her healing salve. Every time she makes a new batch, it’s sold out within an hour.”
The entire time they were talking Mr. Holder was assuming various poses as Aggie took measurements for the suit.
“It’s true, isn’t it, Aggie? Women spend a great deal of money trying to improve their appearance.” He nodded, arms held out on either side, so Aggie could measure his wingspan.
“They do indeed,” Aggie said.
“And yet . . .” He did a three-quarter turn then stopped and looked at Aggie. “What is the name of the specific condition it treats?”
“Candida, sir,” Aggie said. “Affects the mouth and genitalia. Women get it, babies too. Can be quite serious if left untreated.”
“And this is an issue for women?”
“It is indeed,” Aggie said.
“It’s not something ladies usually discuss in public, but there are a whole lot of homemade remedies that women use to treat it,” Jennie said. “But, of course, they don’t always work. My formula, in contrast, could provide consistent relief for anyone who might need it.”
“You want testimonials?” Aggie said. “I know several women who have already tried it. I can get you testimonials if—”
“No, please, that won’t be necessary,” Mr. Holder said. He put his arms down and, measurements at last complete, took a seat in the velvet chair. “Testimonials would only be useful for extolling the product’s effectiveness as a beauty treatment. And I think we are in agreement that that is what this product is. Something for the beauty aisle.”
Jennie smiled. That was exactly where Mamie belonged: in the beauty aisle.
“After all, that’s where the money is,” Mr. Holder said. “Women will put anything on their faces it seems. And there are already more than enough brands of snake oil hidden behind the pharmacist’s counter.”
“Mamie is not snake oil,” Jennie corrected.
“No, it is not. I have already had the sample Aggie gave me analyzed by a chemist. You see, I too have done my research.”
He smiled. “Good work, Miss Williams. And more to the point, exceedingly clever.”
Then he told her what he really thought.
He said he believed the desire for smooth skin and a discreet source of relief from the affliction of candida were concerns no doubt shared by all women regardless of differences in terms of race, class, or regional origin. This meant, if marketed correctly, Mamie’s Brand had the potential to appeal to half the population. He said he was excited about being a part of the distribution of a product capable of contributing to the well-being of so many while simultaneously bypassing the more onerous aspects of the Comstock Law. According to him the Comstock Law had resulted in a profound unwillingness on the part of mainstream manufacturers to get behind any products which directly addressed even the most minor issue of feminine health—a fact which, in truth, represented an enormous opportunity, because it meant the market was wide open. Not only that but, thanks to Jennie’s conceptualization of the product as a beauty supplement as opposed to a medicinal, it could be sold and displayed prominently in the front of the store instead of tucked away behind the pharmacist’s counter.
This, according to Mr. Holder, was the true genius of Jennie’s proposal: she had identified a real, pre-existing need and found a way to package it as an affordable luxury. That, he told her, was the key to a successful long-term campaign: finding a way to convince people that something they need is actually something they want. According to him, it was only the short sellers that insisted the opposite was true. The peddlers of fad products and flashes in the pan—those were the ones who operated on the principle of selling a lie as the truth. Mamie’s Brand, in contrast, operated on the principle of selling the truth as a lie. He was convinced that, if properly marketed, Mamie had the potential to establish itself as a legitimate staple, simultaneously expanding the notion of what a staple was.
In other words, it seemed clear at the time that he honestly understood and appreciated Mamie’s unique value.
“Well done, Miss Williams,” Mr. Holder said and held out his hand. “Why don’t you come by my office next week? I’ll have my secretary contact you to set up the appointment. I should have something drawn up by then. Standard terms, half of which you will receive upon signing.”
Jennie shook his hand while, behind him, Aggie grinned from ear to ear.
“Thank you, Mr. Holder,” Jennie said.
“No, thank you. If everything goes as I believe it should, we shall make a great deal of money together.”
Then he left.
As soon as the door closed behind him Aggie ran across the room and gripped Jennie in a tight bear hug. “You did it! It’s actually happening! He wants to make a deal!”
Jennie nodded. “Thank you, Aggie. For all your help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Me? Oh, you don’t have to thank me. All I did was talk. You’re the one who did all the work. I’m so happy for you. And believe me, there’s going to be a whole lot of ladies looking to thank you too, once Mamie is in those stores.”
Then the bell chimed and another man in a business suit walked into the shop. Aggie had to get back to work. Jennie told him good-bye and walked back outside.
Out on the sidewalk she was still having a hard time making sense of what had just happened. Was it possible that after all those years of trying she had finally found a distributor for Mamie’s Brand? Because if it was, that meant everything was different. She was not the same woman she’d been when she walked into that shop an hour before. That woman had spent a decade of her life trying to create something of quantifiable value, never knowing if she would succeed. Now she was a woman who had ideas that people like Mr. Holder wanted to promote and get behind, who considered it “an honor” to play a part in their distribution. Jennie was a different person and somehow, because of that, everything around her seemed different too. The sun felt brighter, the sky bluer, the sidewalks cleaner. The people walking past her on the street seemed better-looking than they had before. And all this joy because at long last it was happening. Someday soon she would finally see Mamie where she belonged and where she deserved to be: lining the shelves of the beauty aisle.
* * *
Truth was that deal wasn’t happening a moment too soon. As proud as she was to call her shop hers, being a business owner had not been easy and she’d been struggling to stay afloat pretty much since she bought it. It wasn’t just the constant demands of work that made it hard; there was also the pressure of trying to pretend she could afford to keep her daughter in school at the same time. Cutie Pie wanted to be a nurse and Jennie was so proud of the ambition that it never occurred to her to give up on it, although it meant that even when business was good she had never known a time when money wasn’t tight.
Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul had become not just a habit but an art form; still there’d been several occasions over the past few years when things had gotten so precarious that she’d actually considered letting one of her two assistants go. The only thing that had stopped her was the difficulty of determining which one of them she could actually afford to do without. They each had such different attributes that it was hard to say who was less valuable than the other. Lala talked too much but she was also popular, pretty, and above all else, took pride in keeping up with the latest trends. Irene was the more dependable worker but had a narrow repertoire; she was older, set in her ways, and had a noticeable tendency to style women to look like herself. Then there was the matter of the scar, a long thin welt that ran down the left side of Irene’s face and was the result of an unfortunate altercation with her third ex-husband. A lot of people thought it strange for someone with a scar like that to be working in a beauty parlor, but the truth was it was a look that appealed to a certain type of woman. But she also knew Irene would have trouble finding a job in another salon with another employer who might not think to take such a possibility into account.
A couple of months before, after she sat down with pen and paper and put together just how much a year of nursing school was going to cost, she’d finally determined to let one of them go. The next day, almost as if she knew what Jennie was planning, Lala announced that she was pregnant and that the man responsible had run off. This had frustrated Jennie to no end. She’d pretty much decided that Lala was the one who had to go and now, instead of finding herself with the prospect of one less paycheck to sign, she was instead forced to feel responsible for both the woman and whatever might happen to that baby should Jennie ever find herself compelled to turn Lala out.
Now maybe she wouldn’t have to. By the time the streetcar reached Olliana Avenue, her initial euphoria about the possibility of seeing Mamie on those store shelves had hardened into thoughts of something far more practical: money. Was it possible that for once in her life she would actually have some? If the deal was real it meant that not only would she not have to fire Lala, she could pay both Cutie Pie’s tuition and her mortgage. Maybe there would even be enough to expand the shop.
The car rolled past 27th and she looked out the window and saw some members of Harper’s Army shouting on the corner. They were followers of Winston Harper, a man who preached that black people were the center of history. The implications of this were complicated but resolved themselves in the idea that most of what people considered to be the real world was in truth an insidious delusion propagated with the specific intent of keeping black people from realizing their true beauty and power. Winston Harper had spent the past decade touring the country and spreading his gospel before being indicted for tax fraud by the US government. Before that he’d attracted a large following in the city and now some of them were up on a small podium, dressed in matching suits and taking turns shouting passages from Harper’s Doctrine through a bullhorn beneath a banner taped to the wall behind them that read, “This World Is Not Your Delusion.”
Even though she couldn’t hear what they were saying, seeing them had the effect of reminding her of yet another thing she could finally take care of now that she’d made her deal: her husband. Jennie had spent the past seven years legally married to a follower of Winston Harper, although in truth it was not a marriage so much as a business arrangement. When she’d come up with the idea of buying the shop, she hadn’t had enough money to pay for it outright, and it turned out she needed a male relative to cosign for a business loan. So she’d come to an agreement with a man willing to provide his signature in exchange for a monthly fee. Her husband, Tony Marcus, hadn’t had a problem doing this because in his mind a marriage wasn’t valid unless it was to another Harperite and sanctioned by the organization’s leadership. This had caused a great deal of turmoil in many households but worked out just fine for Jennie’s loan application.
“Push back!” the driver yelled as a large crowd of people pushed their way into the car. Jennie walked a few steps toward the rear and considered the fact that that was seven years ago. For seven years she’d been paying Tony Marcus a monthly fee and only every now and then would it occur to her that their marriage meant that the shop and everything she owned was technically his. If she really was going to sign a contract, she couldn’t actually do it until she got her divorce.
She got off at Union Street and hurried down 37th, past a row of street vendors and a small smattering of potential customers eyeing the various sundries laid out on their tables while the rest of the people hurried past them on the busy sidewalk. Technically 37th was part of a residential district, but it ran adjacent to the main shopping center on Union and a wide swath of commerce had grown up on the streets that surrounded it as people started converting their living rooms into places where you could find goods and services not available on the main strip. On her way to the beauty parlor she walked past a wig shop, a hardware store, a shoe repair place, and a West Indian restaurant. On the corner of Cornelius and 37th was Bosswell’s Pool Hall, home base of one of the most successful of these independent entrepreneurs. In addition to the pool hall, Bosswell Banks ran the local policy game, a cash advance business, and a private security firm. The pool hall had live music on weekends, and at night it was always busy, but she was surprised to see people gathered outside at this time of day. It wasn’t until she passed directly in front of the bar that she realized the door was missing. There were two police officers talking to a woman crying at the side of the building while a dozen people stood on the sidewalk, watching.
“What happened?” she asked a man standing next to her.
He shook his head. “They busted right through the front door.”
“They?”
“They had masks on so nobody could see their faces. Shot the bouncer, then went in and shot the whole place up trying to get to Bosswell. A lot of people were in there listening to music. Some of them got hurt pretty bad just trying to get out the back door.”
She looked back at the pool hall. Several windows were broken and the front wall was riddled with bullet holes. A nervous-looking woman was crouched just outside the door sweeping up broken glass. Standing behind her was a row of five men in dark suits, one of whom was Mr. Whitmore.
When he saw her, he tipped his hat.
“Miss Jennie,” Mr. Whitmore said.
Jennie nodded. After the Barclay fire Mr. Whitmore had given up on legal employment altogether and started running errands for Bosswell. Over time he’d risen through the ranks and was now the head of Bosswell’s security business. Jennie didn’t know the details of how that happened and didn’t want to. They always said hello when they passed each other on the street, but besides that Jennie tried to stay out of his business. He’d earned quite a reputation for violence over the years and she knew enough to understand it was probably better to keep her distance.
People called him the Butcher.
“Afternoon, Whitmore. You alright over there? What’s going on?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Jennie. Had a little trouble with some confused individuals last night. But it’s over now. The situation has been handled. They’re not confused anymore.”
He looked out at the crowd. “You all hear that? No more confusion. It’s over now so you can just go on about your business. Hear me? Just keep walking.”
Understanding that this was less a suggestion than a command, the crowd, including Jennie, dispersed.
A minute later she reached the beauty parlor, the bottom floor of a converted duplex with a bright blue awning hanging over the door and a sign painted across the front window that spelled out the shop’s name in yellow letters: “Best Face Forward.” She’d inherited the sign and much of the interior decor from the previous owner, a woman from Mississippi who’d moved to the city with her husband twenty-five years before. The neighborhood was different then. Most of the people who lived there had been white and the entire block was made up of single-family homes. There weren’t many black people in the city at the time and the woman started doing hair in her living room as a way to make a little extra money and also, Jennie suspected, as an excuse to socialize with her friends.
Then things changed. One by one her white neighbors moved out as more black people moved in, the homes carved up into smaller units to accommodate them. The woman became a widow and converted the front half of the ground floor of her house into a proper shop. But the transition to full-time enterprise had not been smooth, in large part due to confusion among her regulars as to whether they were customers or friends. They were in the habit of strolling in at all hours of the day, drinking enormous quantities of the complimentary sweet tea the widow always set out for them, and then just sitting there, talking either to her while she worked or among themselves.
Jennie figured it was why she’d been hired. She hadn’t had any experience, but the widow agreed to teach her what she knew about hair and skin care so long as Jennie took charge of explaining to these ladies that they were trying to run a business. The first thing to go was the complimentary sweet tea. Jennie started charging one cent per cup and when people didn’t like that, did away with the custom altogether. Then she’d introduced an appointment system, let it be known that anyone coming to the shop had to make arrangements at least twenty-four hours in advance, specifying day, time, and desired service. People were no longer welcome to stroll in whenever they felt like it, and as a result, many of them wound up taking their business elsewhere. This had upset the widow a great deal, but by the time she retired, Jennie had figured out how to replace them with women who understood the difference between a customer and a friend.
Actresses and prostitutes. She’d met plenty of both during the years she’d spent as a performer touring with Happy Hillman and knew that many were in the habit of visiting a beauty parlor several times a week. These women put a premium on hair and makeup because their livelihoods depended on it, so they were the ones she’d focused on when trying to drum up business for the shop. In the end they were the ones who’d kept the widow from going bankrupt. Yet all they got in return from the widow was a puckered frown.
It was Jennie’s shop now. She pushed through the door and saw her two assistants, Irene and Lala, already inside. Irene was standing by the mirror curling her hair while Lala was busy setting up her station. Jennie could tell by the tight-lipped expression on Irene’s face that the two of them were arguing.
“That’s not true, Lala,” Irene said between clenched teeth. “There’s black people all over that place. Black people in there all the time.”
“They got black people working in there.”
“Well, that’s all he’s doing. Working. He’s just a headliner is all. It’s the same thing.”
“What are you two going on about?” She hung her coat up by the door and walked to the cabinet beside the register, looking for her divorce papers. She’d had them drawn up soon after she got married and then tucked them away for the day she could finally sign.
“Lala went to hear Dr. Livingston give a speech at the library last night. Now she won’t shut up about it.”
“A speech about what?”
“All the progress we’ve been making,” Lala said. “All our advancements in art and science and music. How our people are out there making great strides, but you wouldn’t know it from reading a magazine or going to the theatre or the grocery store. Because everywhere you look all you see is some fool hawking pancake mix or dish-washing powder or meat sauce. That’s why we’ve got to protest.”
“Protest?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Irene said. “The Rib King is coming to town.”
Jennie looked up from her drawer. “I saw an ad.”
“So you already know then,” Lala said. “Not bad enough having to look at those ads for that sauce all the time, now he’s decided to come here and put on his coon show at the Fowler. A place that doesn’t even let black people sit in the dining hall.”
Jennie frowned and said nothing. She knew that even if people didn’t know about his crimes a lot of them still didn’t like the Rib King on account of his advertisement campaign. They said it promoted a bad image, which of course it did, although Jennie imagined it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the sauce weren’t so popular. For a couple of years, it had seemed like the Rib King was everywhere. Face popping up on billboards across the city, ads in all the newspapers and magazines. Someone turned his slogan into a song they used to play on the radio and someone else made up a dance to go along with it, which, for about six months, was very popular. The character got to be so well-known that a decade later you could still use the phrase “doing the Rib King” to signify anybody acting a fool without seeming to realize that was what they were doing and pretty much anyone anywhere in the country would have known what you meant.
“It’s not a coon show,” Irene said. “It’s a cooking demonstration.”
“It’s a coon cooking show. Cooking with a coon.”
“So what if it is? The man is just doing what he’s got to, to survive. Just like everyone else out here. Once he’s got that money he can do whatever he wants with it. It’s called being strategic. So white folks think he’s a fool, so what? What difference does it make so long as he knows he’s not one?”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Lala said. “Makes a difference what people call you, a big difference. It’s why you should go to a lecture sometimes, get yourself educated. You’d find out that things are related, that it’s not just about the Fowler, not just about one door. Doors are closing to us all over the city, and we can’t just stand around doing nothing. They tell us we can’t go here, they tell us we can’t go there, and it don’t matter how much money you’ve got. Why you think they got us all packed in here on the south side like a bunch of sardines? We got people moving in every day, and where are they supposed to go? And every time somebody acts a fool trying to slip in through a back door it makes it that much harder for all of us trying to get in through the front.”
“And somehow you think that’s the Rib King’s fault? Why? Because of a cooking demonstration?” Irene shook her head. “Girl, where do you think we are? This is the United States of America. Things don’t work like that around here and you know it. Or you should, anyhow.”
Jennie kept her head down, still looking through the drawer. All this talk about the Rib King was making her nervous.
“I don’t understand why you are wasting time talking about it. Got nothing to do with us, we’re not going to the Fowler. What do you care what he does?”
“Because that’s not all he’s doing,” Lala said. “Turns out that’s not the real reason he’s here. Apparently he used to live here. Got some kind of connection to the community. Now he got his name on a list of sponsors for the art show. People saying it’s going to be the social event of the season, everybody else on that list represents our finest citizens. We don’t want to look at his name, think about all the damage he’s done, while we’re reflecting on black genius.”
“Black genius? Man out there trying to do something nice with his money and you still complaining. It’s stupid anyway, standing around waiting for some white man to open a door for you. Instead of criticizing the man you ought to be doing like he do. Figure out how you can get inside so you can double back around and let somebody else in.”
They looked at Jennie still riffling through her drawer.
“What do you think?”
“Me?” Jennie looked up. She hadn’t talked about what the Rib King had done the night of the Barclay fire in ten years and she had no intention of starting now. “I’m not a clown. I think if that’s all white folks see, then maybe it’s all they want to see. Also I think that if someone really wanted to do something for the community, that money could have gone to something useful, like putting food in people’s mouths. Got people out there starving and you all standing around arguing about some art show. Anyhow that’s not why you here, remember? That’s not what I’m paying you to do.”
She looked back down at her drawer, pretended to be distracted by her continuing search for her annulment papers. She knew they were in there somewhere, but all she saw were bills.
“I just don’t see how you can put all that weight on one man, Lala. I’m not saying I like all that he does, but he didn’t make this world. And he’s not like Dr. Livingston. He’s not rich. Don’t you know that? All you got to do is read the label. They got his whole story, right there on the back of the can. How he started out working for some cracker colonel down in Kentucky, how Rib King sauce was that old man’s favorite recipe. Wasn’t until the colonel died that the Rib King made his way north and started working for a man named Mr. Pound—”
“That’s a lie,” Jennie said. The other two women stared. “I knew that man,” Jennie explained.
“Who? The colonel?”
“The Rib King. He used to work with me, at that house I was at when I first got here.”
“What house? You mean the one that burned up in that fire?” Irene squinted. “How come you never mentioned that before?”
“I didn’t think it was important,” Jennie lied. “Anyhow he wasn’t the Rib King when I knew him. But he’s not from Kentucky. He’s from Florida. And he wasn’t the cook. He was the groundskeeper.”
Irene nodded. “Well, see? Now you’re just proving my point. Talk about somebody making something out of nothing.” She looked at Jennie. “How did your meeting go, by the way? With Mr. Holder?”
“It went fine. He wants to make a deal.”
“What? You serious? I mean, not that I doubted you. It’s just been a long time coming, don’t you think? And then, when you didn’t say anything . . . I figured it was probably best not to ask.”
Jennie finally found her envelope wedged against the bottom of the drawer. She pulled it out and slammed the drawer shut.
“I got to go run an errand.”
She pushed through the door and found two women waiting outside it.
“You all open yet?” the older one said.
“Not for another half hour. You got an appointment?”
“No, ma’am. Not specifically. It’s why we come so early.”
The older woman put her arm around the younger and gave her a little shove toward Jennie.
“This is my sister’s child, she just come up from Alabama. I already explained it to Irene. Girl has no money and her mother can’t help her, so that’s what I’m trying to do. She’s a singer and she can dance. She’s been going to auditions but hasn’t gotten any work. I keep telling her she got potential; it’s just no one can see it yet. Still walking around looking country when of course she’s in the city now.” The woman smiled. “Hoping maybe Irene could help with that.”
Jennie nodded. “Irene said it’s alright?”
“She did.”
“Come on in then. If Irene said she’d help you, then I imagine she can.”
“You hear that? Go on inside,” the woman said. “They’re going to take care of you, fix you up. I’ll come back to pick you up in an hour.” She turned around and started walking down the street.
Jennie led the girl inside. “How long you been living here?”
“Six months.”
“That woman really your aunt?”
“I guess.”
“Enough of one to put you to work, is that it?” Jennie shook her head. Actresses and prostitutes. A lot of people acted as if they couldn’t tell the difference. But Jennie could.
“Irene? Go on in the back and get this child a bottle of lactic acid.”
“I was going to get to that. Later.”
“Well, go on and get to it now,” Jennie said.
Then she went to see her husband.